Celebrity Tattoos

Amy Winehouse is known for her bluesy voice, her wild behavior and a baker's dozen of tattoos. A lot of her ink is "old school" in flavor, being colored and styled more like tattoos from the mid-20th century.

Her arms sport most of her tats. If you look at pictures, you'll find a lucky horseshoe, a lightning bolt, a feather and a gaggle of pin-up girls. Some of those tattooed ladies are dressed and some are not. The British tabloids like to say she's tattooed like a sailor. However, her choice of designs that look more like they are from the 1950s or 1960s is actually part of a trend right now in tattooing. This style of skin art also goes well with her look and musical style which both harken back to the 60s.

He's not only a leading man, but a leader in the realm of tattooed actors. Johnny Depp started getting skin art before it got trendy, and he's kept his whole ink collection very personal. In fact, most of the time, you won't see a single tattoo of his in any of his movie roles.

He's got designs for his Native American heritage, the name "Betty Sue" for his mom and one that used to be for Winona Ryder. He's got tattoos for both of his children too.

 If you're asking yourself, hey, didn't Captain Jack Sparrow's tattoo seem to change arms from the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie and the second? the answer is *yes*.

In the first movie, Sparrow's right forearm is bared by Norrington, to reveal a sparrow tattoo and a branded P for 'pirate.' In the sequel, the sparrow tattoo is now on the left arm. The reason? In the first movie, it was a fake tattoo. When you see it in the second movie, it's now a genuine tattoo, which Depp decided to make permanent after the birth of his son Jack. Johnny not only switched the arm placement but he had the design "flipped over" so that now the sparrow is flying towards him, not away.

British-born soccer superstar David Beckham is probably best known to non-soccer fans for his fashion sense and his tattoos. Beckham's tattoo collection is a mix of personal religious symbolism and designs for his wife and two sons. The mix includes Hindu sanskrit, Latin phrases, a few crosses and angels, and the number 7 which he wore when he played for Manchester United. Specific pieces of ink are in honor of his wife, Victoria (aka Posh Spice) and their three sons, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz.

Just before his arrival in the US to play for the LA Galaxy team, David got his right forearm tattooed, making all his work into one complete sleeve. The lower arm continued the angelic theme started on his upper arm. Then he got a large, topless portrait of his wife that takes up his entire right forearm. His very latest piece is a Chinese proverb that runs down the left side of his torso from armpit to waist.

He's also come under fire from his own tattooist, London-based Louis Malloy. It seems that Malloy feels he should get a cut of some of Beckham's modeling fees for ad campaigns that have featured the tattoos prominently. The copyright and ownership of tattooing is a new battleground in the art world and only time will tell how this case will play out.

Check out lots of pictures of David Beckham's tattoos.

No other Academy Award-winning actress has ever had as many tattoos as Angelina Jolie. She acquires ink as she wishes and has done several cover-ups and a few laser removals along the way as well. Her collection is very much in the American vein of tattooing, with multiple tattoos on her arms, stomach and back. They mix languages and styles, and she gets them traveling around, almost like how sailors used to do it.

She's got Latin, English and Cambodian words on her, prayers for her family and personal mottos. Several Japanese kanji have come and gone. Her lower back has a large Tiger that was done by the traditional Thai hand methods, and somewhere way down her recently pregnant belly you'll find a large cross, which is a cover-up for a dragon she once had done when drunk. We'll have to wait a bit to see if that tattoo came through the pregnancy ok.

The one bit of ink that you won't see anymore due to it being lasered off is the words "Billy Bob" that used to be adjacent that dragon on her left upper arm. Recent pics show new ink which is the latitude and longitude numbers for Cambodia and Ethiopia, birthplaces of her first two adopted children. The dragon also shows signs of being lasered off as it's greatly faded.

Check out Angelina's tattoos in more detail. Her latest tattoos were to commemorate the birth of twins Vivienne and Knox.

Poor Britney. Her luck with the paparazzi is about as good as her luck with tattoos. Twice she's gotten tattoos that don't mean what she meant for them to say.

The first was the Japanese kanji on her hip. It was supposed to say "mysterious" but instead the character etched on her is most often translated as "strange." #1 rule of kanji tattoos: check with a native speaker first.

The other one she got which didn't turn out as expected was the Hebrew one on the back of her neck. She wanted it to read "new era" in honor of her study of Kabbalah, but no one checked to make sure the tattooist got the characters in the right order and she wound up with a tattoo that didn't mean anything. Also, the Kabbalah forbids tattooing, which really makes you wonder what her rabbi thinks of all this. Recently reports indicate she may have had that tattoo lasered and redone with a Hebrew design that means "healing."

She's also got a few other tattoos: a fairy, some pink dice, a daisy and a butterfly.

Her latest bits of ink are a black, pink and white cross on her hips and a pair of red and pink lips on her wrist, which she had done in a LA tattoo parlor after shaving her own head at an upscale hair salon where she had been refused service. Reports from the tattoo parlor were that Britney was making a lot of noise and moving frequently in response to the pain of the tattooing.

He drinks... he swears... OF COURSE Colin Farrell has got some tattoos.

Colin's ink can be found on both of his arms. His right upper arm is covered with a large design. He's also got tattooing on the inside of his left forearm. A tattoo for a former flame is covered by a large cross now, and he's got "carpe diem" (seize the day) tattooed there as well.

Travis Barker is known for being a very good drummer, the guy divorcing Shanna Moakler and for his incredible array of tattoos. It takes some serious effort get more tattooed than this.

He spent a decade as the drummer of blink-182, and now can be heard playing with +44. He also got to do a guest-spot on the Las Vegas incarnation of CSI last season, appearing as a rapper who has one of his street teams murdered over a feud with another rapper.

Ink-wise, if you look at pictures taken over the course of his career, you'll slowly see the tattoos getting denser and denser. Images include the words "can I say" on his upper chest, "hope" on his lower back, a large boom box on his stomach, mudflap girls, a portrait of Jesus, various Cadillac symbols and a variety of "lucky" images, such as dice, a dollar sign, a rabbit's foot and the number seven.

Boxer Mike Tyson expanded on his tattoo collection (which includes Chairman Mao and the name "Mike") to include a tribal-style facial tattoo.

When asked why he did it, he made statements about taking inspiration from the Maori and their fighting spirit. This is a bit odd as the tattoo isn't anything like their designs at all. It's a purely American take on elements found in Borneon tattoos. Plus, the Maori tattooed their faces based on strict cultural standards and the patterns in that society are about family and heritage primarily. Tyson's reasoning didn't sit well with the Maori community, and abstractions in the press that it was an actual Maori facial tattoo only made things worse.

When I saw the pictures, I coulnd't help but think of Neal Stephenson's novel SNOW CRASH, where one character who has been in trouble with the law previously bears a forehead tattoo that reads "poor impulse control" as a general warning to the rest of the population.


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